Nearly 10 years ago, the Kickstarter campaign for Chronicles of Elyria was launched. Now, the man behind the project explained why there has been little progress in 2025 and how it will continue this year.
What is the current status of Chronicles of Elyria?
- Chronicles of Elyria is considered one of the most successful Kickstarter MMORPGs, raising over 1.3 million US dollars from more than 10,000 backers in May 2026.
- By October 2019, nearly 8 million US dollars were reportedly raised.
- The promise behind the game: Specifically generated quests for characters, a fully destructible environment, a closed economy, finite resources. No daily routine. Local, regional, and national conflicts. You build the dynasty of an entire family over multiple generations.
- In recent years, the project went through a development hell, with layoffs, dissolution of the team, engine changes, and lawsuits.
- The alpha gameplay shown in the meantime disappointed many backers.
- The main person responsible for the project, Jeromy Walsh, often did not come off well. Whether it was for breaking promises, his communication with the community being lacking, or because he was working on other projects like Kingdoms of Elyria.
In 2025, there were hardly any signs of life from Walsh. In March, the developer stated that he was now working alone on the project and had been doing so for many years without pay. The developer admits that he has sometimes promised too much, especially regarding the modernization of the website, which should have been completed months ago.
No Money, Lots of Court
What has happened since then? Well, not much. Many areas of the website chroniclesofelyria.com are still not accessible. New trailers or gameplay impressions? Scarce. Instead, there was a new post from Walsh on the official Discord at the turn of the year (via Reddit).
There, the developer explains that he had to deal with legal claims at the end of 2024 and throughout 2025. Due to this, it became necessary to pause work on Elyria. His focus over the past months has been to raise money for himself and the project. He does not see much danger in possibly losing the lawsuit.
While the threat of legal action is real, the actual risk remains relatively low. I fully expect to keep fighting for the right to continue development, but the chances of losing any litigation are minimal.
Jeromy Walsh on Discord (via Reddit)
The money is supposed to come from the release of his other projects ElyriaMUD and Kingdoms of Elyria. There are also talks with a third-party studio that apparently has interest in developing its own game for the Elyria universe.
Walsh also emphasizes the new experiences he gained regarding the Soulborn engine and a potential web and mobile foundation. He therefore expects “big progress in 2026.” Whether this also concerns the original Chronicles of Elyria is not made clear in the statement.
How does the community react to this? So much has gone wrong with Chronicles of Elyria over the past 10 years that the project cannot shake off its scam label.
- Consistent-Mine5006 predicts on Reddit: “What I read here is: The game is dead, I’m going to focus on mobile games with little effort from now on.”
- MGfreak believes on Reddit: “If this third-party studio exists and uses this IP, I guarantee you that it is one of those fraudulent studios aiming for quick cash. For this goal, even the worst IP is better than no IP, as long as people have heard of it.”
- wirblewind sees it similarly on Reddit: “It is impossible that anything related to Chronicles of Elyria at this point is not a scam.”
Since the Kickstarter boom in the 2010s, there have been a number of developers who wanted to finance their MMO via crowdfunding. But which games have actually been released? MeinMMO delivers a reckoning after more than a decade: 24 Kickstarter-MMOs that wanted money from you – A balance after 13 years with a frustrating balance
